1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet printer with a cutting head which can form an image and cut out the image and more particularly, it relates to an inkjet printer with a cutting head which can form an image and cut out the image with high precision.
2. Description of the Background Art
An inkjet printer with a cutting head is well-known in the art, which is operated by computer control so as to cut an image such as a character, a drawing or a sign from a sheet such as paper or a marking film based on image data output from a host computer.
The conventional inkjet printer with a cutting head has been disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 9-254591, for example. According to the above document, the inkjet printer with the cutting head comprises a pen block having an elevating mechanism for pressing or separating a recording pen or a cutting pen held therein, toward or from a recorded medium, a moving mechanism for moving the pen block, and an inkjet block having an inkjet head. When the image is formed by the inkjet head, the inkjet block is connected to the pen block by the pen block moving mechanism and the image is formed by the inkjet head through the movement of the pen block, and the inkjet block is separated from the pen block by operating the elevating mechanism of the pen block.
In order to connect the pen block to the inkjet block, a hook mounted on a slider of the pen block, a lever member mounted on the inkjet block so as to be rotated around a shaft, a torsion coil spring constantly forcing the lever member in a predetermined direction, a stopper, an abutting member and the like are used, and the constitution becomes complicate.
The conventional inkjet printer with the cutting head was constituted as described above. There are problems that a connection structure between the pen block and the inkjet head bock is complicated, the pen block and the inkjet block are not likely to be smoothly moved although they are slidably mounted on the same rail through a slider. Furthermore, there is deviation between the inject head and the capping position at an end of the inkjet head in which a capping operation or the like is performed, so that the capping operation cannot be performed with high precision.